Dimensions Before You Post

Dimensions Before You Post

Select a Dimension Value Code for the Dimension Code DEPARTMENT... — the single most common support ticket in Business Central finance. It always arrives the same way: someone clicks Post on a twelve-line order, the whole posting is refused because of one line, and nobody can tell which one until they walk the document by hand.

Your job is a pre-flight validator. Given a sales document, it reports every line whose dimensions break a default-dimension rule — all of them, in one pass, before anyone touches Post.

Requirements

Create a codeunit named "Dimension Precheck" with one public procedure:

procedure CheckSalesDocument(SalesHeader: Record "Sales Header"; var Violation: Record "Dimension Precheck Violation"): Integer

The starter already contains the buffer table the procedure fills, "Dimension Precheck Violation", declared TableType = Temporary with these fields and the primary key "Line No.", "Dimension Code":

• "Line No." (Integer) — 0 for the document header, otherwise the sales line's own "Line No.".
• "Dimension Code" (Code[20]) — the dimension whose rule was broken.
• "Value Posting" (Enum "Default Dimension Value Posting Type") — the rule that was broken.

Do not add the temporary keyword to the Violation parameter: the table is already temporary by declaration, and the tests pass a plain record variable.

What the procedure does

1. It empties Violation, writes one row per broken rule, and returns the number of rows it wrote.
2. Every source of rules is a master record carrying Default Dimension rows. The document header is checked against the Customer in SalesHeader."Bill-to Customer No.", using SalesHeader."Dimension Set ID"; findings are reported with "Line No." = 0.
3. Every sales line of the document is checked twice: against that same customer, and against the line's own master record — the record its Type and "No." point at (an Item for an item line, a G/L Account for a G/L account line, a Resource for a resource line, a Fixed Asset for a fixed-asset line, an Item Charge for a charge line). Both checks run against SalesLine."Dimension Set ID" and are reported with that line's "Line No.".
4. Lines that point at no master record — Type is blank, or "No." is blank, as on description and comment lines — are skipped entirely and never reported.
5. A Default Dimension row is a rule only when its "Value Posting" is not blank. Plain default-dimension rows ("Value Posting" blank) only supply a default value and can never be violated.

The three rules

For a rule on dimension D and the dimension set being checked:

• Code Mandatory — the set must hold a non-blank value for D. Broken when the set has no value for D.
• Same Code — the set's value for D must be exactly the rule's "Dimension Value Code". When that field is blank, the set must hold no value for D. Broken in every other case.
• No Code — the set must hold no value for D. Broken when it holds one.

What you can rely on

• Sell-to and bill-to customer are the same on every document the tests build.
• For any one dimension set that gets checked, at most one of its two sources carries a rule for a given dimension code — so a "Line No." + "Dimension Code" pair is never claimed twice, and you never have to decide which of two rules wins.
• The same broken rule on three lines is three rows, one per line.

Pick object IDs in the range 50100–50199 and reference other objects by name, never by ID. Captions on your own objects are good practice but not graded.

What the tests check

The grading tests build sales orders in a real company, put Default Dimension rules of each of the three kinds on the customer, on an item, on a G/L account and on a resource, bend the document's dimension sets so a rule breaks, then call CheckSalesDocument and check both the returned count and the exact rows in the buffer — "Line No." (0 for the header), "Dimension Code" and the "Value Posting" rule named. Covered: a missing mandatory value, a Same Code rule met, a Same Code rule missed by a different value and missed by no value at all, a blank Same Code rule against a line that carries a value, a No Code rule met and missed, the customer's rules reaching every line, two broken rules on one line, a description-only line that must never be reported, a plain default dimension without a rule that must never be reported, and a buffer left over from an earlier call that must be emptied. Two tests anchor the result to reality: a document whose line the precheck flags is refused by the standard posting routine, and a document the precheck accepts posts successfully.

Learn More

• Work with dimensions — default dimensions per master record, and what the Value Posting field is for.
• Troubleshoot and correct dimensions — every dimension error that posting can raise, and the rule behind each one.
• Dimension Set Entries Overview — how a document's dimensions are stored as a shared, immutable set.
• Temporary tables — what TableType = Temporary means for the buffer you fill.